The UK Prime Minister’s special advisor, Dominic Cummings, allowed himself to be manoeuvred into a position that no special advisor wants to be in: that of needing to explain themselves to the media, on the record. Consequently the world got to see Cummings, the PM's man behind the curtain, squirm in his chair in the garden of Number 10 Downing Street, as he doggedly stuck to his story about why he broke the COVID-19 lockdown.